Formed in Los Angeles five years ago by founders Ben Grubin, lead singer, and Jeremy "Jerm" Reynolds on bass, Hockey is now based in Portland, Oregon as a quartet with Brian White on guitar, and Anthony Stassi on drums. Mind Chaos was released independently, and the group signed to Capitol late in 2008. The album will be remixed and remastered, with new songs added, for the August 25th, 2009 international release.
With "song away" acting as a holistic mission statement wrapped in a nod and a wink, "These scruffy bike-riding vegans could easily be enjoyed by fans of Dylan, Springsteen and the Hold Steady as much as they could by devotees of LCD Soundsystem" says U.K.’s Guardian newspaper. "See them now while they are still playing small rooms," advises Time Out New York. Glide caught up with Hockey guitarist Brian White following Lollapalooza for a quick Hot Spot moment.
I was at your recent Lollapalooza show and your set was shortened, what happened?
Um, let’s see, right before we started playing actually, the monitor guy went to hit the "save" button, to save all the settings for our sound check, that we spent a whole lot of time on. He accidentally zeroed out the whole system and canceled the monitors. When we came out on stage we had zero….any kind of monitoring systems. I mean, bands like playing without having a bad sound guy, but this was just like we didn’t have any sound at all. And then to top that off, I think the second song in, the whole power to the stage cut out. To be honest, it was kind of a relief… and then it cut out again on our third or fourth song, and then we left.
You must have been pretty emotional after that?
You know what, it was alright, it was alright.
You started as only two members in LA and moved to Portland and doubled in size… how did that happen?
Let’s see, Ben (Grubin) and Jerm (Reynolds), they actually moved to Spokane, Washington to search for more band members and Anthony (Stassi) and I had been playing in a band for a long time, up until college, that’s how we kinda met. Then, the band moved to Portland.
How is the music scene in Portland compared to LA?
Portland’s got a really, I call it, "insider’s scene," I mean, it’s really like kinda "niche", the term hipsters come to mind when you think of Portland, just really hip people. There are hip, popular bands that maybe a mass audience wouldn’t really care about but there’s some really great great bands.
Do you tend to find more intimate settings in Portland when you’re performing a show there as opposed to in LA?
Yeah, I would think so for us, just because we’re from Portland. LA, to us, or, to me, is the real like industry kind of a place, I don’t think people really have a great time at shows here, ya know? They aren’t moving around a lot, maybe it’s because they don’t know us that well.
You’ve previously toured with Friendly Fires and Passion Pit, who are both here at Lollapalooza as well, any future collaborations?
I would love to. We always run into Passion Pit, it seems to be like every month, like at Lollapalooza. But, they’re good friends of ours. Friendly Fires, we would absolutely love to tour with them again. So, hopefully that can happen.
Where’d you get your name from?
The name, I guess it was just kind of a joke in a way. The name is associated with something totally unrelated to music. Jerm (Jeremy Reynolds, bass) also says that the name aesthetically looks good on paper.
Did you run into problems with any kind of advertising, people getting confused because the name could come across as deceptive?
You know, I think we’ve been offered some hilarious like campaign, that’s like tied in with hockey on the radio, NHL things. No good for us.
How is your fan base here in the states compared to overseas? Do you think it’s larger here?
No, I don’t think its larger. I think it’s larger overseas. I think what’s happening in the UK is a reflection of the amount of touring and shows that we’ve done there. To compare it to the states is just unfair, I mean, sure we’ve been playing here for a long time but those were bar shows and we never had proper promotion like that’s been going on in the UK.
How would you describe the sound of your debut album, Mind Chaos?
I think there’s a dance element, rock element. It’s Talking Heads meets The Strokes. Kind of throwback American song writing, like Dylan, Springstein, that kind of sound, lyric wise.
Do you find yourself mainly pulling from the 80s or is there a different era that you find yourselves pulling from?
Yeah, I don’t think there’s a specific era. I think the 80s thing is production. 80’s have a real nice dance production, they got it right. They had some great sounds going on recordings. Keyboards, that kind of thing, was real popular in the 80’s as well.
Your debut album is scheduled to be released soon, were you surprised to be playing a festival as large as Lollapalooza?
Before our album comes out? Yeah, I’d say so. Even though we were the first band, we were kinda like nervous about people being there and it ended up being a great crowd. Yeah, I guess we are really surprised, though.
